Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilmanwas a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth3 July 1860
CountryUnited States of America
To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.
A concept is stronger than a fact.
I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.
But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it.
No matter what the belief, if it had modestly said, 'This is our best thought, go on, think farther!' then we could have smoothly outgrown our early errors and long since have developed a religion such as would have kept pace with an advancing world. But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate.
However, one cannot put a quart in a pint cup.
Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.
Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
The one predominant duty is to find one's work and do it.
It is the duty of youth to bring fresh new powers to bear on Social progress. Each generation of young people should be to the world like a vast reserve force to a tired army. They should life the world forward. That is what they are for.
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.